


for me, it isn't over

by queenofthecon



Series: keep holding on (to me) [1]
Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF, Chef RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, god i do not even know, i am a monster for angst, the first rule of the rpf club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21623461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthecon/pseuds/queenofthecon
Summary: she’s here now, in front of him, standing across the counter from him – beating on dough with a rolling pin – and he’s blushing like a schoolgirl, remembering more, remembering the feel of her thighs around his waist, the gold and the black in her eyes in low light, the taste of the sweat on the hollow of her throat. The marks he’d sucked into her skin had faded from everywhere but his memory.
Relationships: Brad Leone & Claire Saffitz, Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Series: keep holding on (to me) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558987
Comments: 15
Kudos: 65





	for me, it isn't over

**Author's Note:**

> Partly a request, partly my self-destructive tendency to listen to Adele on repeat on Spotify. Please remember that the F in RPF stands for fiction - none of this is real, do not share this around with anyone because I might die of embarrassment if you did. Many thanks to this tiny, beautiful fandom of whom I adore.

It was_ not_ an affair.

Affairs don’t happen between single people. Affairs aren’t five years of history and tension broken over shots of tequila and freaking weird cocktails at a Denver hotel bar. It’s a shame, then, that all Brad remembers of that sticky July night is the following:

1) Claire’s eyes looked dark and wide and fucking irresistible;

2) She’d kissed him first (a solid 65% sure-ness there);

3) No teasing is the first and only Saffitz rule. He broke that one quickly (a 100% sure-ness). 

So, as it happens, when the real, actual Thanksgiving gets nearer and nearer, the chill and cold settling into the trip over the Hudson, the more they ignore that the night in Colorado even happened.

It’s kinda killing him now, if he’s honest. 

A single, love-drunk night of letting go, completely free and loosened from the thin boundaries they’d put in place years ago, a night Brad can’t even fucking remember because he’s an _asshole_ and a _coward_, is all he has of her. Everything is spilled out onto the floor at their feet and ignored and they’re stuck in goo, unable to move. But he’s so fucking-fucked because he’s screwed up – one night of fucking freedom and all it’s done is made him love her more in words he can’t string together. Not that he hadn’t fucking tried – it just seemed to make it worse the more he did. Babbled half-hellos, their rhythm gone wrong, their chemistry off-kilter.

Because Brad does not deal in shoulda-woulda-coulda like Claire does; all he wanted in Colorado was to kiss her like there’d been no yesterday, no years missing, no worrying about tomorrows or questions or awkwardness, wanted her to understand that she’s all he needs forever. One goddamn night in the arms of Claire Saffitz and he wants to be a man worthy of her, to give her the key to things she’s owned for years.

But tomorrow happens. The hotel bed was cold and smelled like her the next morning, empty and full and God, he’s fucked it all up beyond reasoning, recognition, because he’d ignored it too, ignored the scarf around her neck covering the teeth marks and redness, ignored the tinge of pain on his back from her nails scratching him. Turns out one night can’t get rid of the aching need of her, it just makes the hurt more present because deep down, he _knows_ that much more about Claire Saffitz.

He’s getting sick of the Hudson ferry crossing, of her running out of the room when he enters, of surrounding herself with people so they can’t even _talk_ about it. God, Claire won’t even look into his eyes for more than a heartbeat and neither can he. The words just won’t come; his own brain goes too fast, refuses to let him think he could ever keep a woman like Claire happy, that he could give her the world she deserves. Maybe she kinda knows it too.

Most of all, though, Brad misses _them_.

Usually, he can speak enough _Saffitz_ to know when to cool off from poking at her with sharp objects and when to put the smile back on her face with a dumb joke and praise to make her blush and say his name _like that_, the way that makes him feel kinda funny and like he doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve hearing it. You’d think he’d have the whole _‘I’m fucking crazy in love with you, let’s get married and have a bunch of babies and get fat and old together’ _thing down on lock on day one, done.

Nope. He’s just some freaking dumb-ass because she’s here now, in front of him, standing across the counter from him – beating on dough with a rolling pin – and he’s blushing like a schoolgirl, remembering _more, _remembering the feel of her thighs around his waist, the gold and the black in her eyes in low light, the taste of the sweat on the hollow of her throat. The marks he’d sucked into her skin had faded from everywhere but his memory and everything is just _different_.

Claire’s there, an arm’s reach and a world away, and all Brad can talk about is how the weather’s turning.

“Bad storm coming in, huh?” he murmurs she whacks the pastry on her countertop for like the tenth time. Maybe she’s imagining it’s his head. “Heard they’re talking about turning traffic away from the bridges and shit.”

Her eyes stay stubbornly on the dough as she starts pressing her weight on the white plastic pin, trying to get it to co-operate. “Yeah, Carla said something about that,” Claire says, her face scrunching up as the dough splits and catches on the rolling pin.

“Ferry’s good, though,” he replies, looking up from his own project to see her try and save the pastry.

Thing is, Brad knows Claire still; nothing can change that. He reads her bad days like a book with pictures and it’s all over her face. She’s one more split away from scraping the whole dough into the trash and starting over.

“S’wrong…” she mutters under her breath, sighing and peeling buttery dough bits off the plastic. “I need-”

He knows already. “I gotcha.” Like a shot, Brad pulls open a drawer and retrieves a wooden pin, Brazilian cherrywood, tapered French ends, handmade. He knows because he brought it back from Montana for her.

Claire’s impossibly small hand wraps around it and she freezes like a deer in his headlights up in the Catskills. Brad sees recognition spark in her eyes as she finally, finally looks at him for more than a second. “Thanks,” Claire replies quietly, a tiny smile playing at the corner of her lips before she looks back down.

His hand lets the pin go and the moment’s gone. She was his, then, just for a second, back to being Claire-and-Brad with no walls, no thin veil of pretence. That’s all he needs to see to know she’s in there still, that she’s not done.

There’s a grin tugging at his lips just from the smile trying to break through hers. “No problem.”

Her gorgeous pastry doesn’t stick to cherrywood. It turns the dough supple and smooth and Brad watches her fingers run over the pin almost lovingly, sneaking glances up at him though she never says a word.

When her fingers trail and rub over her throat – over the ghost of his marks on her neck – Brad swallows and feels all of it come rushing back in the heat of a Colorado summer.

\---

_Claire, Claire, Claire. _

_It’s the only thing he can think of beyond the haze. His hands gripping soft thighs, pressing her against a bedroom door, her small hands working on his jacket before impatience grabs her and she tears it from his shoulders. It’s so much, heady and intoxicating and all he wants is to bury himself inside her._

_The way she says his name, hitched and desperate, when he sucks at her throat and tastes remnants of citrus from whatever perfume she has on is a sound he wants to hear again and again._

_Brad groans as he hauls her up and presses his leg between hers. He loves her, he loves her, he loves her._

\---

Alright so he still can’t figure out the exact right combination of words to say to make it better. In his defence, Brad’s a dumbass and maybe there’s something to be said for not rushing in with both feet again. But, God, he’s starting to really remember the more he looks at her, sees the soft curls of dark and grey hair starting to skim the tops of her shoulders, her tiny gold hoop earrings glinting more in the light. She’d cut her hair since July, just enough that it makes him wonder if she remembers him gathering it in his hand, running his fingers through it, the callouses catching the tangles. He wonders a lot about her, actually. There’s a million things he wants to learn, stories he’s gotta hear about her growing up, about how she’s managed to live so many different places while he’s never lived anywhere but New Jersey.

Brad decides he really needs to get a fucking grip. Or a plan. A plan sounds better.

“Brad, that your onions I can smell?” Morocco calls from the next workstation over, his face scrunched up like someone’s offended him. “Something’s really burning, man.”

Fuck. Fucking motherfucker. The chicken stock.

“Ah shit,” Brad groans, dashing to the stove and lifting the lid off the pot just to see acrid waves of smoke billow and spread like the plague. He lifts the giant stainless steel pot from the burner and heads for the sink, smoke and steam still spluttering from the top. The cold water sizzles as it hits the hot metal and he grumbles.

Claire’s wafting the smoke away from her and her station, holding her apron to her face like a mask and he feels like a moron all over again. Can’t even make fucking chicken stock without ruining it, smoking out the place.

“Jeeze Brad, can you take that somewhere else?” she pleads. Morocco’s got a sheet pan in his hands, directing the smoke up to the extractor fans before the alarms go off; Brad’ll really be in some deep, deep shit with Rapo if they have to evacuate or something. “God, that really smells…”

“It’s fine, Claire, Christ, it’s just some burned onions, not mustard gas bomb or whatever,” he snaps, and it comes out too sharp for his ears, unlike him, unlike them. Claire looks suddenly pale and this is why he can’t use words, because they’re always the wrong ones and he can’t stop it. “I’m doing my best here, Claire.”

But this is Claire and she can’t stop the pissy anger from her face even if she tried. “Obviously not,” she snaps too, trying to waft away the air from her still.

“Yeah, I get it, Claire. I’m sorry, okay!” Brad snaps, putting his hands up in surrender. The entirety of the test kitchen is looking at him like he’s insane but what breaks him is seeing her hand and the mask drop from her face and the way her eyes dash to everyone in the kitchen except him.

“Sorry…” Claire mumbles under her breath, and rushes past him without a word, rubbing her wrist almost frantically, her steps clicking faster the more she runs away.

Letting her go is hard. Watching her go is harder still; he’s rooted to the floor, not giving a shit about the audience around him but focussed on the look on her face, stoic and flat.

Brad doesn’t want to look up because he knows what will be plastered all over Morocco’s and Carla’s faces. Man up, get your shit together, Leone. Make it good again before something worse happens and everyone suffers more for it. It’s been a few months of rockiness but Jesus, it’s gotten so shitty lately…

“Yeah, I know,” Brad says in defeat, before anyone even takes a breath to tell him what to do. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow when she’s calmed down, alright?”

If there’s one goddamn thing left in the whole Test Kitchen he can fix, it’s Claire Saffitz. He has to, because otherwise he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do.

\---

Alright. He’s not panicking because Leones don’t panic, okay? It’s not in their vocabulary so he’s absolutely not panicking. It’s just that he has one, kinda big, Claire-shaped problem he’s having trouble solving: she’s nowhere to be seen. She should be there; it’s in the schedule and everything, filming going on like day five of Jellybelly bullshit (the sugar ones never go her way) and a 2pm call time she’s in danger of missing because – hello – she’s not in the kitchen like she’s meant to be. It does not mean he’s panicking. It just means that Brad gives up checking on the doors opening halfway through his next batch of sauerkraut as the _feeling_ of something being wrong intensifies. Because of course she’s in his head like a freaking Vegas residency, and he can’t stop thinking about all the weirdness and how he wants it to just go away but this? It’s not like her to skip her kitchen time, to not be in his way refining or tweaking or pulling her own hair out over tiny things that matter in baking.

Something’s different lately, and it’s scaring the shit out of him when it gets to like past noon and he’s still not seen those big doe eyes trying not to look at him.

Then all of a sudden, it’s 12.45 and Brad’s gotta do something, even if nobody even seems to notice she’s not there. It’s eating him alive and the irony’s not lost on him.

“Gaby, you seen Claire?” he asks just before his watch hits 1pm, wiping weird sauerkraut juice from his hands with his apron. Gaby’s on the stepladder again, reaching with rubber gloves to the very back of the stovetops clearing shit away. “I gotta thing I need-”

“Yeah we all know what you got for Claire,” Gaby replies, clearly having none of his bullshit. He can’t blame her when she’s trying to balance six mixing bowls in one. “Check the back office, maybe, I dunno,” she waves him off with her hand, the bowls she was grabbing slipping from her fingers with an almighty crash and Spanish curse words he’s not a hundred percent sure he understands but knows they’re directed at him.

“Thanks Gab, you’re the best!” Brad grins, slapping his hands together and practically jogging out of the room and down to the offices.

But Saffitz-shaped problem number two becomes apparent pretty quick because she’s not in the office either. God, this woman drives him crazy in about eight different ways and only six of them are good. Very good. Maybe it’s just pure instinct he’s running on, or the ever-likely present idea of never being allowed near her again playing in his head, but Brad just knows he has to talk to her there and then, today, now, five minutes ago. Make things right again, be friends.

Brad stalks down the cubicles in giant strides, hoping to spot her, trying not to panic (Leones don’t panic) when he still can’t find her. He’s scrubbed at the back of his head a hundred times as the strange pit of worry grew in his stomach like a rock sinking him into the ground. In desperation, he pulls his phone out of his pocket in the middle of the jungle pit of cubicles and dens of desks, messy with books and unopened mail, and dials Claire’s number hoping it'll at least ring before she hangs up on him.

And then suddenly, almost unbelievably like a lighthouse beacon in the dark and deafening silence of the empty office, he hears her phone ring and follows the tinny noise.

“Claire?” Brad calls out half-heartedly, having sudden flashing images of her collapsed on a floor making everything seem worse. “Claire, you here?!”

The phone’s still ringing in his ear and the room and Brad tries to follow the sound, the chimes getting louder as he gets closer to a desk, messy and disorganised with Polaroids tacked up with tape to the cubicle wall, a half-dead office plant on the windowsill next to it: Christina’s desk. Claire’s phone is sitting there, on Christina’s desk and she’s nowhere to be seen. He grumbles a little and ends the call, picking up Claire’s phone, getting more worried by the second. He’s got no fucking clue where she is or what to do.

So, it’s also totally not his fault that he jumps out of his skin when Christina taps him on the shoulder a minute later.

“Hey Brad, whatcha doin there?” Christina says suspiciously, her brow arching at him as if he’s a kid being caught stealing from the cookie jar. “Why d’you have Claire’s phone?”

His mouth goes a little dry as Christina slides past him to sit at her desk. “Yeah, I was just, y’know, looking for her. Ain’t seen her since yesterday and I got Kevin getting all Mr Director and shit, asking where she is and I said I’d call her,” he waves Claire’s phone in Christina’s face, not sure exactly why he was lying to her. “Turns out she ain’t here but she left her phone on your desk, which ain’t exactly Claire-like, huh?”

Christina’s still eyeing him closely, not that he blames her considering the bullshit that’s just spewed forth, but still. “Yeah, she was watching some videos from the Thanksgiving recipes we developed,” she replies, going to her desktop and swiping at the mouse, the black monitor screen fading quickly into the YouTube screen. “Stuff that went up last night.”

The screen lights up again and it’s a freaking storm of comments he doesn’t wanna read, things and words that just seem to build and get worse. He sees it at the same time as Christina does, exactly why Claire abandoned her phone. Each comment he scans over makes him angrier and angrier. “Well shit…” Brad swears under his breath, watching as the screen scrolls down. “She read the comments, didn’t she?”

“Yeah…” Christina mutters almost too-quiet, shaking her head. “I just went to get coffee, I didn’t know it was like this…”

He’s got a death grip on Claire’s phone in his palm, glancing at the guilt in Christina’s face and thinking it should be his own reflected on the monitor. But he knows where she is now; it’s where she always goes when the world gets too much.

\---

_Those big brown eyes intense, staring into his soul now and always. Neither of them say more than a word or two – now, want, need, please – and don’t have to, he knows. Claire knows. He’s swimming in her, carrying her, messy and grinning to a bed he thinks is his because he never gets housekeeping and the sheets are already sloppy and untucked, clothes scattered around the place. Her mouth tastes of tequila._

_Brad wants nothing more than to see her like he’s floating and watching it happen, gets her half-naked and in his bed after years of dreaming and it’s hazy and beautiful. She giggles and he grins and stumbles over into thinking this is a dream, because she’d never want him, but she’s so impatient and pushes at his hips until he flops onto his back and it’s Claire. His Claire with freckled shoulders, tiny scars on her fingertips and redness in her cheeks._

_Those lips are softer still, insistent, as desperate as he feels. He’s hard just thinking about watching her come undone, a secret to be shared only with him, now, here, tonight. It’s dumb and drunken, never a mistake. He’ll keep the secret to his end. _

_Her name’s on his last breath before something inside him snaps and he’s just that hungry._

\---

It’s really a good thing that only he and Claire seem to know about the abandoned supply room five storeys down from the Test Kitchen on an empty floor, like it’s their place to go when there’s too much going on, when there’s an escape route needed and Brad’s so dumb that he didn’t even think about her going back and hiding in there from the rest of the world.

He’d told her about their tiny little hidey-hole like four years ago when some nasty piece of work intern with a smug face decided to start harassing her for a date; Brad had wanted to cave the kid’s nose in too, but sadly missed the opportunity to do so when he’d quit the next day. This floor of the building wasn’t used for anything really – just an empty meeting room that’d been locked forever and storage space full to bursting of old equipment and back issues of the magazine from like the 70s or some shit. Even Brad wasn’t alive in the 70s, God knows why Rapo and the big bosses were keeping hard copies. The entire floor was just nothing.

Brad knows she’s here before he even takes a step off the elevator. There’s no humming drone of fans or roar of gas stoves, there’s not a million different smells or people talking. It’s just calm and quiet, empty as he’s even seen a place in a giant fucking office building in the middle of New York. It’s Claire’s sanctuary, as she’d called it once. Her bit of nothingness in a world of full of noise.

But he hates that he hears her crying before he sees it, hates that she’s sitting on the floor with her knees pressed up to her chin and her face flushed and sunken at the same time, puffy and tear streaked and still beautiful. She’s so far away and just out of reach. He can’t fucking stand it any longer: he’s gotta fix this, for both of them.

“Brad?” Claire says, turning her face to look at him as he walks up to her, not knowing where to even begin. There’s tracks of dried tears on her face just as new ones fall from her wide, glassy eyes. “Shit, what time is it?”

“You got time,” he replies quietly, standing over her. She’s so fucking tiny at his feet and God, he just wants to erase it all in one go, the comments and his shitty behaviour, and make it better. “Claire-”

“Everyone… they…” she shakes her head and her body unfolds slowly where she’s sat on the carpet.

Claire just dissolves into tears again, turns her face away and he’s not fucking taking this anymore. Brad crouches down next to her and hooks two knuckles under her chin, her head tilting slowly for him as he drags her chin up; the pain he sees in her eyes is raw, unguarded and makes him want to protect her with everything he has. A calloused thumb swipes as another tear cascades over the curves of her face and hopes that she sees how sorry he is for all she’s feeling. His hand curves and cups her cheek, and they’re themselves again, unspoken and real. Those dark eyes of hers close and the tears stop as she leans into his giant palm for comfort.

“Claire…” Brad says, a little broken, a lot lost, too much in love.

Before he can utter a single sorry, she reaches up and places her hand over his, her slim fingers threading through his as her eyes opened. “I don’t know what-”

“You don’t have to know, Claire,” Brad says, running his thumb along her cheekbone. Her face is a mess of puffy eyes, bitten lips and pain but she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. “Those comments, they’re fucking morons, okay?”

They chuckle together and it’s the _best _sound he’s ever heard.

“I’m really bossy, huh?” she says almost breathily. “God, I don’t know why I even kept reading them, Brad.” She squeezes his hand before dropping hers back to her lap. “It’s like I’m a masochist or something, I just couldn’t stop and it… there was so much.”

Before she can dive back down that hole, his hand drifts and drags down the pale column of her neck, fingertips catching the beat of her pulse before he pulls away. “They don’t matter, Claire, c’mon.” Brad swallows thickly, sitting down on the carpet next to her. “You’re not one video on some dying platform, okay? You’re fucking amazing.”

Claire rolls her eyes and wraps her arms around herself, rubbing at her skin. “It just sucks, y’know?” She says, voice breaking a little. “Everything sucks, and I just keep ruining things. Like everything I touch turns to shit lately.”

“You too, huh?” he grumbles, looking down. “Claire, I-”

“Don’t,” she interrupts, staring straight into his soul. “I get that you wanna let me down easy, go back to how things were, but I _can’t_ do it, Brad. Not now. Things are different, and we can’t go back anymore.”

He can’t breathe.

\---

_She tastes sweet and salty and heady, like nothing he’s ever had and when he finally slides into her body, it’s too much like being whole. Fingers scratch at his skin, pain sparking, legs tightening at his waist. Yes, yes, yes, more, need, want. Please, he begs wordlessly, thrusting into her; please love me too._

_Brad kisses the groans and whimpers from her lips as he grabs the headboard, knuckles white and watches her face as he fucks her hard, desperate, needy. He fucking needs her more than air, wants this to last a lifetime, to be the one, her one._

_The air’s thick and feels like sex, her body soft and tight, fitting into his hands as if she was made for him and his rough palms, and it’s sordid and wrong but right, and he loves her._

_‘I love you,’ she says into his ear, breathless and hitched. He can’t speak, can’t think beyond ClaireClaireClaire and they come together, gasping and groaning, sticky and sweet and breath stolen away. It’s not an affair, it’s the beginning and the end._

\---

“You think that’s what I want? To go back after…” Brad swallows his reply and feels desperately like everything’s slipping between his fingertips like sand. “You think… Colorado was just a one-and-done?”

“I know, we just… ignored it.” Claire mutters, averting her gaze. “The big shoot happened, and you were charming my Mom, and everyone was there, but you were staring at your phone the whole time like you couldn’t look at me,” she sniffles and wipes another tear with her own hand. “We never talked about what we were. I just thought you thought it was a mistake, that we were pretending. And… and I thought I could handle that. But I loved you too much to handle it. And now, I just didn’t know what to do. I still don’t.”

Brad can’t stand it any longer. “Claire, you- I’m not good at this. The longer I left it, the more I got into my head thinking I wasn’t good enough, or that you’d get bored of my dumb ass making mistakes and fucking up but God, I can’t stop myself around you, it fucking hurts not being with you now. And I… fuck it… I love you, alright? It’s all I got, Claire. I love you too.”

She looks at him as if she doesn’t believe him for half a second before their eyes meet and he surges forward, kissing her on the carpet of an abandoned office, dried tears on her cheeks and an ache in his back. It’s perfect.

Claire sinks into his arms as he curls around her, placing kiss after kiss on her lips, reliving every moment of that incredible night together. “Brad, I need to tell you-”

“What?” he smiles sloppily against her lips, but she stills and pulls away suddenly, looking at him with that fear he’s never seen on her face. Claire Saffitz doesn’t get scared but when it does it scares him too. “Claire?”

“I’m pregnant,” she whispers, and the world drops underneath his feet.

**Author's Note:**

> don't hate me, come scream at me on [my tumblr page](https://queenofthecon.tumblr.com/).


End file.
